1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayered ceramic capacitor and a method of manufacturing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, capacitors, inductors, piezoelectric elements, varistors, thermistors, and the like, are electronic components using a ceramic material.
Among ceramic electronic components, a multilayered ceramic capacitor (MLCC) is an electronic component having advantages such as miniaturizability, high capacitance, and ease of mounting.
The multilayered ceramic capacitor is a chip shaped condenser mounted on circuit boards of various electronic products such as display devices, for example, liquid crystal displays (LCDs), plasma display panels (PDPs), or the like, computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and the like, serving to charge electricity or discharge electricity.
The multilayered ceramic capacitor may include a plurality of multilayered dielectric layers, internal electrodes disposed to face each other, having dielectric layers interposed therebetween, and external electrodes electrically connected to respective internal electrodes.
Recently, as electronic products have been miniaturized, microminiaturization and the implementation of super high capacitance in the multilayered ceramic capacitors used in the electronic products have been required.
Therefore, a ceramic capacitor in which thicknesses of the dielectric layer and the internal electrode are thinned to allow for the micro-miniaturization of products and in which the number of multilayered dielectric layers is increased for super high capacitance has been manufactured, but there has been a limitation in increasing the capacitance of the product through only this configuration.
In a common multilayered ceramic capacitor, since an internal electrode having a predetermined thickness is printed on a ceramic sheet so as to have an area smaller than that of the sheet and then multilayered, a step portion with respect to a margin portion is necessarily generated, and the step portion may be increased in margin portions in a width direction of the dielectric layer.
Meanwhile, a multilayered ceramic capacitor having a structure in which all internal electrodes may be exposed to the same surface, for example, a lower surface, to allow the lower surface thereof to be a mounting surface has been disclosed.
In the case of the multilayered ceramic capacitor of which the lower surface is a mounting surface, in the margin portions in the width direction, having a right-angularly formed step, a possibility that a cracking will be generated by the step portion with the dielectric layer may be relatively high, and an area of the internal electrodes vertically overlapped with each other may be reduced by an area corresponding to the formed margin portions, such that capacitance may be reduced.
A structure in which lead-out portions of internal electrodes are exposed to the same surface of a substrate is disclosed in the following Patent Document 1, but a structure in which a connection portion between the lead-out portion and the internal electrode has an inclined surface is not disclosed therein.
A structure in which a connection portion between a lead-out portion and an internal electrode is inclined, but internal electrodes are alternately exposed to both end surfaces of a ceramic body is disclosed in the following Patent Document 2.